It’s almost like Maggie hadn’t taken several months off.
She was back in fine form on FBI Season 5 Episode 8 as she used her Midwestern charm to infiltrate a white supremacist group.
In typical Maggie fashion, she found herself in precisely the right place when things unexpectedly blew up.
Maggie’s major problem is her partner, OA, who just couldn’t let Maggie be Maggie. He made undercover more difficult by second-guessing her choices which he viewed as reckless.
Fortunately, Isobel and Jubal had a different perspective, trusting Maggie to decide what she could and couldn’t do.
While OA overreacted, he wasn’t wrong to be concerned about Maggie. She’s hardly easing her way back in, taking on undercover roles to stop drug dealers and white supremacists in her first two cases.
Still, would it hurt Maggie to be backup while she determines if she’s physically and mentally up to the job? Just because she’s been medically cleared doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s all the way back.
The good news was that Maggie wasn’t plagued by flashbacks to the sarin lab like she was on FBI Season 5 Episode 7. So that’s progress for sure. But is she totally out of the woods yet?
Maybe she was just in a more comfortable setting while infiltrating the Norse Brotherhood, dealing with people like those she grew up with in Indiana. It was a whole lot easier for her to talk that talk rather than having to pretend to be a drug-slinging club owner.
Maggie basically had to look like a Midwesterner (that knocks out the rest of the agents) and be able to shoot well. Easy peasy.
Having Deke, the brother of the brotherhood leader, Eric, crushing on Maggie certainly didn’t hurt her investigation, as she got further inside than she would have otherwise.
Still, she was undoubtedly taking risks throughout the case, such as planting cameras in the basement and running off with that hoodie. Whether those were calculated risks depends on the perspective of those judging her behavior.
After determining that the brotherhood was definitely building a bomb, Maggie had to work fast and risked being found out. No one else had the position she did adjacent to the organization.
As soon as the agents picked up Eric, Maggie’s undercover role was on borrowed time. So she had to make the most of it while she could.
The fact that the team had a compressed timetable to locate the bomb was helpful to them. They didn’t have the luxury of observing and tailing brotherhood members. They had no choice but to work quickly.
This meant they could arrest Eric and, at the very least, take him off the board. He wouldn’t talk, but his truck’s GPS did, pointing out a likely spot where the bomb was being built.
Sure, they bungled that takedown and the lone member on site escaped. But they did identify Nick as the other killer and the bombmaker. Unfortunately, they ended up with a bunch of empty drums, with the bomb already gone.
That enabled Maggie to exploit the relationship she was building with Nick to allow Scola (the only other agent who could pass as a white supremacist) to steal Nick’s phone long enough for Ian to download the data off of it.
That left them with the best possible scenario: the bomb in the hands of Deke, the man Maggie had wrapped around her fingers.
Tracking down Deke was ridiculously easy. Maggie correctly had him pegged as a younger brother trying to impress his older brother, not a true believer.
There was never any doubt that she would be able to talk him into surrendering and even turning on his brother in the end.
Maggie was right to have it out with OA. He has been overstepping as her partner since her return.
Shouldn’t Isobel or Jubal have stepped in before now? The way he had been second-guessing Maggie had to be apparent to them as well.
One reason for OA’s behavior that didn’t come up was that he was the squad’s alpha dog while Maggie was recovering. Their dynamic has sent him back to being her junior partner, and that transition has to be hard for him to take, although he’d never admit it.
But he did confess why he’s been acting as he has. He blamed himself for Maggie being trapped inside the lab with the sarin gas while he couldn’t get in to save her.
Maggie rightfully pointed out that what happened was nobody’s fault. Once again, she had outrun her backup and paid a significant price for doing so.
Was this heart-to-heart talk between them enough to get their partnership back to where it was before her accident? Probably not, because they’ve both got something to prove.
Maggie wants to prove that she’s back, in all her bad-ass glory. OA must show that he can protect Maggie from her worst impulses, which is a full-time job.
Maybe the solution is to shake up the partnerships regularly so all the agents can get a break from their usual work spouses.
To revisit Maggie and OA’s partnership, watch FBI online.
How did Maggie fit in with those white supremacists?
Who is overreacting more, Maggie or OA?
Is Maggie trying too hard?
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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
